Page:Inside Canton.djvu/30

Rh this state that the young tanka girl introduced it to me. When the tao-fou is fermented, it tastes like our strong cheeses.

The Chinese in the southern provinces have an inexplicable repugnance to milk, and to all that results from the diverse manipulations to which it is subjected; however, they have, by means of an empiric process, certainly the result of chance, fabricated, with a vegetable, a substance which is the best imitation of that which inspires them with so mustmuch [sic] disgust. Nevertheless, tao-fou, fresh or fermented, will never replace to European palates that thick and unctuous cream which is eaten in Norman farms, nor Sassenage and Roquefort cheeses, nor even Brie or Neufchâtel. The custom-house officer who accompanied the mission, in his zeal for the industrial interests of France, was desirous of transporting thither the fabrication of tao-fou. All his efforts tended to substitute for our excellent cheeses of Auvergne, Cantal, Normandy, and the Alps, a substance of an inferior quality, and a much higher price: it was what the worthy man called a discovery. The use of tao-fou in this part of China serves to prove a very important sanitary truth: it is, that in every country, in every zone, and at all times, men have instinctively understood, that they must unite with the natural products on which they feed, food which is fermented or undergoing fermentation.